Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of the places called Oare in Berkshire, Kent, and Wiltshire, or Ore in East Sussex, all named with Old English ōra ‘shore’, ‘hill-slope’, ‘flat-topped ridge’. It may also be a topographic name from the same element, though Reaney and Wilson consider that in general this would have had an initial N-. Compare Noah 2.
- Scottish : possibly from the Sussex place name.